Adjustments needed to meet HYCC biz plan

The Hyannis Youth and Community Center finished its first fiscal year with rave reviews, 3,700 paying members and an $80,000 surplus.

David Still II

Softer summer puts facility in the red

The Hyannis Youth and Community Center finished its first fiscal year with rave reviews, 3,700 paying members and an $80,000 surplus.

Now coming off a soft summer for facility rentals, the center is running a deficit, the Barnstable Recreation Commission was told Oct. 4.

The summer was slower than expected at the HYCC, putting the facility about $40,000 in the red for the first four months of the fiscal year, according to Recreation Director David Curley.

The lesson learned with the hot summer, which would seem to make the chilled facility more attractive, is that people think summer activities in the summer.

“The heat was not an advantage,” Curley said in an Oct. 14 interview. Program changes for next year will reflect that lesson, he said.

Curley expects that with the more traditional rental season underway, kicked off for the public with a sellout Army /Colgate hockey game Oct. 8, that shortfall will be covered by the end of the fiscal year.

The business plan for the HYCC is based on a full-recovery model. Curley said that the debt service on the facility kicked in with the 2011 budget, which started July 1. The added $250,000 debt expense, as well as a continued learning curve of how the community will use the facility through four seasons, mean some adjustments are in order.

On Oct. 4, the recreation commission voted unanimously to recommend a shortlist of fee increases across different recreation division programs.

Curley recommended and the commission agreed to bump weekend parking fees at town beaches from $15 to $20, up the summer leisure fees from $75 to $100 per week and increase ice rental rates by $10 an hour across all user groups.

The recommendation is for the new fee schedule to go into effect Jan. 1, a little more than half-way through hockey season.

Recreation Commission Chairman Joe O’Brien raised a concern for programs such as Barnstable Youth Hockey, which set its tuition rates at the end of the last season. The bump in rental time come January could represent a problem.

Curley said that the rental escalation was included in this year’s ice rental contract with most of the groups. In an interview Oct. 14, he said the fee increases are a reflection of a more demanding business plan.

The weekend and holiday parking premium of $20 per day in the summer could represent a significant amount of money for the aquatics program, Curley said. Revenues from weekends and weekday parking collections are split about 50/50 at present. He estimated that close to another $75,000 could be raised through that increase alone, which Curley said is comparable to some other Cape towns.

He said that staff did not want to change the residential sticker rate of $30.

Staff at the HYCC are also looking at the possibility of melting one of the ice sheets for dry-floor activities after hockey programs wrap up in late March and through the end of June. On utility expenses alone, he said the facility could save between $10,000 and $12,000 per month while generating perhaps $5,000 to $7,000 in rentals.

Curley told the recreation commission that the center’s marketing director is looking for donation opportunities for indoor turf to make such activities more attractive.

The facility has a serviceable plastic floor for soccer and lacrosse, but a turf system, an estimated $75,000 expense, would make it more attractive.

Last year, the summer leisure program ran a deficit of $5,000, Curley said, raising $240,000 in fees against $245,000 in expenses. He said that he borrowed from other program revenues to make up the difference.

Curley is also looking to recoup added costs to the department for the added consumer benefit of offering credit card payments. He said while convenient, it exposes the operation to service charges of 2 1/2 to 3 percent of the charged amount. Curley said that could represent another $6,000 to $7000 in expense that will need to be absorbed in the rates.

The recommendations will go to the town manager, who holds his annual fee hearings the first week of December.

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